I know how I felt as a first-time dad. I laughed. I cried. I was on a high that simply could not be duplicated. More importantly, I wanted to be around the tiny human I helped to create more than anything. I wanted to hold her, kiss her, feed her bottles, take her on walks around the neighborhood, and bond with her. The time I spent with my daughter (and her younger sister a couple of years later) while I was on paternity leave was simply awesome.

Unfortunately, maternity and paternity leave are touchy subjects in the land of the free and the home of the brave, due to the fact we lag embarrassingly behind pretty much every other industrialized nation in that regard. Sure, we have FMLA (Family & Medical Leave Act), but that only protects an employee from losing his or her job while bonding with a child — it doesn't require the employer to pay a dime to that individual while away from work. When it comes to dads, many are unable (or simply refuse) to take leave from work due to finances, peer pressure from colleagues and superiors and various other reasons. Because of that, there's a lot of ignorance surrounding how men should approach taking time off once a baby is born.

Don’t believe me? Think back a few months, to some of the enlightened and progressive thoughts offered by a few nameless members of the New York media (you all know who they are) after Daniel Murphy, the starting second baseman for the New York Mets, took a few days off to bond with his first child:

"I don't know why you need three days off, I'm going to be honest. You see the birth and you get back. What do you do in the first couple days? Maybe you take care of the other kids. Well, you gotta have someone to do that if you're a Major League Baseball player. I'm sorry, but you do… Your wife doesn't need your help the first couple days, you know that."

"You get your ass back to your team and you play baseball… there's nothing you can do, you're not breastfeeding the kid."

These men aren't just your garden-variety meatheads (well, maybe they are) — they're also dads. And don't be fooled. Just because those clowns got crushed by many rationally thinking parents doesn't mean there aren't men out there who believe wholeheartedly in these kind of ignorant sentiments.

There are a million reasons why a new dad should take a paternity leave. Here are a few.

A Dad Should Be There When His Child Is Born

Contrary to what some believe, a good dad changes diapers, he calms his baby's meltdowns while said baby adjusts to life in this strange world, he supports his spouse in any and all ways she needs (which can range from preparing family meals, to waking up in the middle of the night to tend to a fussy baby so she can rest, to just holding her hand), and spends quality time with the baby he helped to create. Bringing home a paycheck plays a very small role when it comes to that. Quite honestly, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that it's 2014, and some people still believe that a dad's presence isn't important when a child is born.

Being A Dad Has Nothing To Do With Your Job Or Your Bank Account

Here's another reason why some men chuckle at the notion of paternity leave: Because some are the sole breadwinners, they erroneously believe it absolves them from their parenting duties. Check that — they believe bringing in the money is their parenting duty.

We all know these dads. They are the ones who spend countless hours away from home doing "real work" while their wives are left at home to handle the "simple duties of raising kids between watching crappy daytime television." They brag about how cool they are for going back to work the day their kid was born as if it is a badge of honor or something. They don't change diapers, give baths, play dress-up with their daughters or help their sons with homework. That's beneath them. And why should they? If it wasn't for their bankroll, their wives and kids would be living on the street. Sadly, there are many dads who subscribe to this line of thinking — and to call them dads is a stretch, when in reality they're nothing more than walking, talking ATM machines.